The Hecker Castle
Near Detroit, Michigan
On Woodward Avenue in Detroit stands a French château that went up in eighteen eighty-eight, built by a man who had came out of the Civil War and went into manufacturing railroad passenger cars. Frank Hecker and his business partner Charles Lang Freer rode the Gilded Age to enormous wealth, and Hecker built accordingly. His house is a large French-style château inspired by the châteaux of the Loire Valley.
Hecker lived there until his death in nineteen twenty-seven. The house then became a music school under the Smiley Brothers, who sold organs and pianos. It is now owned by Wayne State University.
It is one of the last intact examples of Gilded Age industrial wealth on what was once Detroit's most magnificent residential boulevard.
